January 2018

The DAS (Directorat de l’activité Sportive) and ICI Radio-Canada Manitoba hosted their awards gala on January 25th 2018 at the Sports Manitoba Building in Winnipeg. Rob received the Excellence Award in the Visionary Category and was extremely grateful to celebrate this prestigious honor with his family and friends. Rob gave a speech at the ceremony and talked about his younger days of playing sports in La Broquerie and how it had an extremely positive effect on who he is today. Always deeply involved in the local sporting activities, Rob is regarded as one of the top leaders in the Saint-Boniface and Francophone community. Rob is seen taking a picture with his wife Michelle, son Alexandre, daughters Arielle, Angéline and Aubrie. The other picture includes his father Claude.

Rob was asked to give his take on the Cannabis sector in the Canadian Securities Market. Vice News published an article in January 2018 featuring Rob, Portfolio Manager and Senior Vice-President of National Bank Financial. Investing in the marijuana market has been a hot topic as of late, seeing share prices of pot stocks sky rocket with some listed companies experiencing triple digit gains in 2017.

What we’re talking about today is the proposed taxes changes from Trudeau and Morneau. Now they announced this earlier this year, and in kind of a big brouhaha and kerfuffle and they used words such as closing loopholes, making sure the rich pay their taxes and bringing fairness to all taxpayers. In reality, the only people they targeted here were business owners and business owners are the lifeblood of our country. They create jobs, they make the market move, they create wealth through their own businesses and through the jobs that they create.

So let’s actually figure out what they have done here.

Income sprinkling

So income sprinkling means if I want to pay dividends to my kids, my wife, my grandkids, and they are shareholders of the corporation, they can receive dividends. And they are paying dividends at a favourable tax rate. Now income sprinkling is on the way out according to the government. So they are no longer going to let you pay dividends to those people.

So if I’m a shareholder at Tim Horton’s or at Canadian Tire, I don’t need to actually go serve coffee in order to collect my quarterly dividend from owning that stock. I don’t need to sell hockey sticks to get a dividend from Canadian Tire. Now in privately held corporations, like business owners across this wonderful country, they can no longer do that unless the wife or the kids or the husband is actively involved in the corporation, which is ridiculous in my mind, and in fact it is the only place in the world where they are going to have a reasonableness test for dividends.

Holding passive investments in a corporation

Now this is the second thing that they wanted to attack. So if I hold a corporation, I have a holdco, I can take the excess capital and I can grow my net worth and I pay a smaller tax rate there. Because remember, we don’t have pensions. Business owners don’t have pensions—They have to fund their own pensions. Well this is one way to even out the playing field. Well, they attacked that. The good news is that they did decide that they were not going to follow through on that. The only ones that they will attack are corporations that have passive income of $50,000 or higher. That is good news.

Three. They took a look at the capital gains strip.

The capital gains strip is an effective strategy to move an income to a capital gain thus reducing tax payable. A lot of people are doing it at a high net wealth level. They decided that they are not ready for it, they brought some measures forward, it’s not happening at this point.

So here is the Straight Talk.

With respect to dividends, if you are currently paying your children or your spouse dividends and being taxed at a low rate, continue to do that aggressively. Why not. The tax changes aren’t coming yet and when they do come, then we are going to want to consider potentially other strategies, such as an IPP, which is an individual pension plan, or other high-level tax planning strategies.

Two. With respect to passive income in a holdco or in an investment company, you want to get that passive income as high as you can before the tax changes come into effect, because they are likely going to grandfather any previous income.

Three. You’ve got to be aware of any and all potential future tax changes that are going to come. And for that, make sure that you are on top of things when Morneau or Trudeau announce anything, likely in 2018 or potentially in 2019.

The Tetrault Wealth Advisory Group is very excited to have started a new YouTube show for our viewers. Straight Talk will aim to deliver the hard facts, transparency, and insights on the Financial Investment Markets, Geo-Political Activities and everything & anything about Portfolio Management. On this first episode, Rob gives his take on the Canadian government’s proposed tax changes. Topics including income sprinkling, passive income, capital gains and individual pension plans are all on top of mind for Canadian business owners in 2018.

Another successful year in the books for Rob and the Tetrault Wealth Advisory Group in 2017. Rob took the 9th position on Wealth Professional’s prestigious list of Top 50 Wealth Advisors in the 2017 edition and improved his ranking to #2 in 2018. Wealth Professional’s Top 50 list ranks the greatest financial planners and investment advisors from Canada’s best wealth management firms. Handling over $340 million in assets under management in 2017, the Tetrault Wealth team more than doubled their AUM in the last 12 months. This recognition is a testament of the hard work put in by the Tetrault Wealth Advisory Group as well as the loyalty of their clients.

The Canadian CMV Foundation is proud to announce that its 6th annual Western Canada’s Largest Winter Outdoor 3 on 3 Ball Hockey Festival, Le Classique will be held on February 9th & 10th, 2018 at Whittier Park (Grounds of Festival du Voyageur). The tournament is widely recognized as being the most important sporting event on the winter calendar in Manitoba. The tournament is the Canadian CMV Foundation‘s largest annual fundraiser and has allowed them to continue funding CMV vaccine research.

Transcription

I’m Rob Tétrault. Until my son was born neither myself, or my wife Michelle had ever heard of Congenital CMV, the number one cause of infant disability in North America. After seeing the effects of CMV we wanted to make a difference. The result: the Canadian CMV Foundation and Le Classique, Western Canada’s largest outdoor 3-on-3 ball hockey tournament. So, if you’re 10th and 11th February at Whittier Park, it’s hockey, a Friday night social, live bands, kids activities, food, prizes and more. Proceeds help fund CMV Research. Register now at leclassique.ca.

The Canadian CMV Foundation is proud to announce that its 6th annual Western Canada’s Largest Winter Outdoor 3 on 3 Ball Hockey Festival, Le Classique will be held on February 9th & 10th, 2018 at Whittier Park (Grounds of Festival du Voyageur). The tournament is widely recognized as being the most important sporting event on the winter calendar in Manitoba. The tournament is the Canadian CMV Foundation‘s largest annual fundraiser and has allowed them to continue funding CMV vaccine research.

Since its first year, the tournament has continuously grown at an impressive pace by adding teams, divisions and activities to the weekend, and this year is no different. This year will feature 5 divisions (novice, competitive, corporate, women’s and Co-Ed), will host a huge social on the Friday night and children’s activities on Saturday afternoon. The weekend is a fun filled affair with activities for all ages.

As Chair of the Foundation, I couldn’t be more excited to be hosting the sixth year of this great fundraiser. Le Classique is really what started it all for our wonderful foundation. When Marc Foidart and I started this event 6 plus years ago, we knew we wanted to host a community event, we knew we wanted to throw a party, but at the same time, we knew we wanted to raise money. The Canadian CMV Foundation is the result of all that hard work. This year, we’ve set the target at $75,000.

In its relatively short period of existence, the Canadian CMV Foundation has had some remarkable successes. In 2016, the Charity doubled its endowment fund, grew its Medical Advisory Committee Nationally, joined forces with the Global Network of CMV Foundations, gained significant traction in its effort to enact legislative change and started planning for the first ever National CMV Summit.

ABOUT CONGENITAL CMV

Congenital Cytomegalovirus (CMV for short), is a debilitating congenital birth defect that can cause serious disease in babies who were infected with CMV before birth. It is the #1 cause of infant disability in North America, with about 1 in 150 children born with the condition. For more information on congenital CMV, you can visit www.cmvcanada.com .

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